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Excerpt from Frances Johnson

Frances Johnson

clear cut press

Chapter One

Frances Johnson sat on her front porch, listening to the
radio in the dark. She wore a blue dress.

Beyond the wooden porch, night was thick. Frances
stood, walking into the living-room, listening. A train
lumbered across a nearby trestle, halting as it reached
the center of the weak bridge. Below the trestle was a
curving road, leading in one direction toward the
town, and in the opposite direction toward the sea.

The train hissed. It would follow a tricky, meandering
route that would probably lead to another state.

Frances was an expressive woman in many ways.

There were so many people and things to think
about, such huge compendiums of circumstances.

Sometimes Frances was afraid for no real reason, it
seemed. Oftentimes, waking in the middle of the
night, she was uncertain who she was. Frances did not
like that. Stumbling to the bathroom, she feared that
who or whatever she was would be inappropriate or
cause a calamity of some kind-and that was the most
frightening thing of all. Standing on a little foot-rug,
she would calm herself by rubbing her limbs briskly,
hoping the heat would fill out her body and make it
more dimensional.

"We can't know the future," she said dully to someone
on the telephone, then hung up the heavy receiver.

Outside, the porch swing creaked.

"I will not attend the dance," she spoke aloud to herself.

Frances had a suitor, Ray Garn. Ray was fine,
though sometimes his enthusiasms were hard to understand.
The two had been together for quite some time,
making vague, halfhearted plans for the future.

Ray was mild-tempered, and things generally went
well. Once, though, they traveled a few miles south to
search for the sea-just that once-and Ray hid
behind a wall for hours, causing Frances to feel a kind
of fury.

It was a long, tall wall that rose up to hide the ocean
shore from the road. Ray squatted next to it, smoking,
smiling, and looking up at Frances when she found
him, as if it were all a game, as if he had made her
worry on purpose by hiding. She got so angry that she
smacked him, hard, on the jaw.

He laughed. "Frances, it was just a joke! You know-hide-and-seek?
Well, now you can hide, if you like."

Frances did not want to. She preferred to go into the
cabin and play a quiet game by herself with a bowl of
salty water, a religious-type game in which she imagined
punishing and bathing herself and others. Sitting
alone, in any case, brought such relief that Frances
locked Ray out for most of the trip, feeling deliciously
private while he stood by the sea with its freezing
waves.

After some time, she saw through the cabin window
that Ray had resorted to taking a walk. The wall along
the beach prevented him from looking at the sea-assuming
he liked the sea-and clamorous, gusty winds ripped at his
sleeves and hair.

Frances left the cabin to join him at the far end of
the wall. They said nothing at first, but soon were sharing
some hard crackers and butter, sitting in the wild
grass near the fence, chatting amicably and joking,
shouting into the wind.

That evening she allowed Ray into the cabin bedroom,
which smelled cheerlessly of mothballs and skin.
He lay next to her on the bed for a while, then, levering
upon bent arms, rolled atop her. She heard a tiny click:
Ray's eyes shifting. After moments, he rolled away.

"It doesn't make sense to me," she exhaled toward
the window, which framed a dark, gelatinous sky. "Two
adults, in the middle of the night ... one lying on top
of the other ...?" Frances felt out of sorts.

"Yes, it's awfully strange," Ray agreed.

They fell asleep.

After the vacation, the pair got along fine. There
was no reason to argue, they said, and each day vanished
quickly, as if eager to flee the world. While not
exactly gloomy, Frances regarded Ray with some sense
of puzzlement.

Frances could not perceive Ray easily. She noticed,
when physically close to him, that his head loomed so
near and large she lost the sense of what he really
looked like or who he was altogether; she would wonder
why she was positioned next to him at all. She did not
always enjoy their time together. But Frances stuck
with Ray, on some days forgetting about him entirely.
Her parents did not care for him, which was disappointing,
but on the other hand, he was dependable,
and good at bicycle tire repair.

It seemed she loved Ray.

Whom did Frances Johnson love?

Tonight, she looked at the door.

Ray was there. He looked down over his broad,
tanned face.

"If things keep going the way they are, well, I think
someday soon there might be a revolt!"

He was referring to their town, Munson. Years
before, it had been called Hutchinson-Munson, after
the pair of entrepreneur brothers-in-law who had
founded the city upon a dream of a prosperous
smelter. That business failed for countless reasons, the
unpredictable Florida weather being only one of
these. Still, the brothers-in-law strove to become
famous, because they feared sudden death and the
nothingness that might come after. So they became
joint mayor of the town, writing a pamphlet about
the local volcano and its stolid beauty before fleeing
the region. Now, the town was simply known as
Munson.

Munson was isolated, though at its border stood a
sister town, Little-Munson, which was poor and weak.
The people there always seemed to struggle for the simplest
things.

Ray often expressed irritation with Munson,
because, as he put it, the town preferred to forget-perhaps
hide from-the outer world. Others, including
Frances, were inclined to feel the same. Certainly
there were worse places to live, towns that lacked even
a council. But Munson had a strange air; besides, it had
too many rules.

"Oh, Ray, who's going to revolt? There's no one to
revolt," she said tiredly, glancing at his dark sweater-vest.

Frances did not care about Ray's childhood or his
life before they were together. She did not bother to
inquire about his former girlfriends, though sometimes
she saw Ray gazing at a wallet photograph of a girl sitting
on the lap of a tough-looking older man: the girl's
father, who had been prominent in a long-ago war. The
girl was Fluff Davis, with whom Ray had spent a year
or so. He doted on the old picture, even kissed it once,
Frances observed, perhaps in admiration for the soldier
father.

He opened the door. "Hmm," Ray began. "There've
been plenty of revolts through history-peasants
revolted during the reformation in Germany. Ha! They
thought Martin Luther was on their side."

"Please, can't you take that discussion to your
friends or brother?" Frances grew tired of Ray's overly
detailed references to battle. "Give me some advice. I
need something for this problem of mine." She shut
her eyes and lay back on the beige sofa.

"What is it, Frances?" He sat nearby.

"Oh, the not-sleeping, I guess."

"Yes. It's awful for you! What can we do?"

"All those pots and pots of coffee to wake me up! I
feel sick, thinking of it. And the sleeping pills to get me
down at night-I don't necessarily like taking them,
you know."

"I know. Well, can't we-"

"My heart could even burst! Could it?"

"Oh, no, Frances, no-that doesn't happen."

"Look at my eyes-these eyes are tired. I can barely
get up in the morning."

"Frances, let Palmer help. I'll call him and make an
appointment for you."

Frances scowled. She said, "Can't you just stay here,
Ray? Let me lie in bed, with you on one side, and the
telephone on the other, just for the night! Please."

Ray laughed. "Ho, I suppose that might be all
right."

"Thanks! And Ray, don't talk about Napoleon, all
right?"

"All right." Ray undressed. He was plump, and that
pleased Frances. She looked away, thinking of other
things: the insomnia, the strange non sequiturs she
overheard neighbors speaking through the phone lines,
and her dog. Immediately, she fell into a hapless,
jagged doze, only to wake moments later, frightened
back from the horizon of unconsciousness, for she had
seen a turtle there.

Munson was hard on folks, she guessed, tossing in
the bed, punching back the stiff coverlet. There was a
sense of shame and difficulty in the town, though it
was hard to say why. It wasn't easy to find another
point of view, either, since Munson didn't much care
for newcomers, and they stayed away. Companies and
industries-ones that made gadgets-rarely settled in
Munson or the adjoining Little-Munson, though they
headed in sure droves for other Florida towns.

Frances recalled passing along Munson's main
street that day and seeing the remains of a tattered,
blowing poster on a pole asking as to the whereabouts
of Josh White. He had been, she recalled, an
argumentative boy of about thirteen. A year ago, Josh
White had gone looking for his dog, who had run into
Munson's oil-black nighttime streets. It seemed that
the dog was lost, but it had in fact been detained by
one of the town's sheriffs, and later the dog died,
though no one could say why, only that there had been
some type of a mix-up. Josh White got mad then. He
fought loudly with his mother all that week in their
cabin on the forest hill. The boy told his mother he
would never forget the dog, though she pleaded
with him to do so. But over the next month Josh
White grew worse, not better, walking alone through
the town late at night, hurling dirt chunks at
Hodgkins' Movie House and other local businesses.
Finally, his state of mind seemed to turn entirely:
when spoken to, the boy would only open a wet, rosy
mouth to scream, so in a short while, his mother took
him to Ohio. After weeks the boy returned, again
milling around town resentfully, and shortly after that,
no one ever saw Josh White again. Secretly, Frances
was a bit envious of the teenager, if only because she
wanted to leave Munson, too.

Lately, Frances had been thinking of various plans
to leave, but they seemed to her shaky, laughable plans.

Ray pulled back the bedclothes, and Frances' nose
whistled with air. The atmosphere in the bedroom was
one of contained quiet, as if the little room itself were
keenly balanced on a pole. And at the other end of the
pole, creating the balance-what was that? Maybe all
the pills and pots of coffee, Frances considered wryly,
turning over, eyes open.

She looked up. Everything seemed all right.

"Asleep?" Ray said.

She made no answer, and soon heard a muted
clicking: the sound of Ray picking at his front tooth.
She dozed.

In the late morning, Frances and Ray dressed
together and unrolled their town paper. The sun was
bright and high. Frances had awoken rather easily, with
less exhaustion than usual, and in a burst of energy, she
giggled at something Ray said.

Then, there came the sound of a blast. The house
vibrated. Another booming noise seemed to burst
hollowly into the first, causing both Frances and Ray to
yell reflexively as the bedroom window shook. In the
backyard, a small wooden fence toppled over.

She raised her eyes to the ceiling. Yes, it had happened
again! A volcano was situated in the sea outside
Munson, though Frances so often forgot. Sometimes
it rumbled like this. The vibration manipulated the
ground such that it trembled; this was at times
followed by fierce winds, fires, and even steam puffs
dotting the sky. Townsfolk occasionally referred to the
volcano as "Sharla," but just as often, they didn't think
about it at all.

The house rattled with a moaning wind, and,
in spite of herself, Frances was frightened, her heart
beating hard enough that she felt her pulse in her eyes.
She looked around the room: but where to go? "This is
awful!" she cried, diving onto the bed next to Ray.

"It'll probably be fine!" he shouted reassuringly.

They lay still. The sounds of rushing wind and
debris continued; briefly, the sky dimmed. A few fist-sized
chunks of rough rock tumbled across the roof
onto Frances' lawn. It's as if another world has come
crashing into this one, she thought.

Ray clutched a tissue. "That damned volcano!"

"Let's just wait," she said.

They did.

Soon, light eased into the room again. The pair
relaxed, then fell asleep; after waking, Frances felt better
for the extra rest.

"Ray," she muttered dreamily then, looking to his
glossy eyes. "I don't think I've ever asked you directly.
How old are you?"

"Thirty-six. And you?"

"Thirty-eight. We're the same age, really."

They smiled together.

When Ray stood, he remarked, "Why, you look as
helpless as a little girl, all wrapped in that blanket!"
Then he moved to the bathroom.

Frances reached for the whisk broom and dustpan
in her bedside table and began to sweep, eyeing the
black telephone, a hot, serpentine anger climbing at
the back of her throat because of Ray's remark. At
times he was maddeningly superior, she felt, in a way
that made her want to shout.

She looked through the living-room window, facing
the yellowish light, glimpsing outside the refuse blown
by the eruption and what appeared to be a large dog
lying in the street. She turned away, shivering. All the
nice things about life, she mused, are they nice because
we compare them to all the ugly, awful things, like
threatening winds, crashing stones, and the sun-the
sun? And fury, she finished to herself. She spoke aloud,
"Is fury such a terrible thing?"

She leaned at the window. The anger had abated,
and Frances looked toward town, past quiet Ann Street
with its homes blanched in stillness. Without thinking,
she turned to the bed and kissed Ray's cheek, then
kissed it again and again, an activity that made so little
sense to her that she could not stop, for each kiss was
both the beginning of a chance to understand the thing
and a way to avoid it.

Ray waited, looking at his shoes. "What will you do
today?" she asked finally.

"Don't know, Frances. Maybe I'll call Kenny. I'll
work. I think I'll take a little walk! And I'll make an
appointment with Palmer, too-for myself. I think,
Frances, that you might do the same."

Frances scowled.

Ray left.

She reached for the telephone, not sure whom to call.

She began dialing her mother's number, and heard
a mechanical screeching in the phone, then the sound
of folks laughing. Frances sighed and hung up. The
phones often malfunctioned in Munson. Lifting, then
dropping her arms with sudden fatigue, she recalled, as
if from long ago, the deep pleasure of sleep.

As Ray had suggested, Munson was often frustrating.
Yet the world beyond it, and beyond Little-Munson,
was too complicated to imagine. Considering
this idea as a schoolgirl, Frances often had stared at
classroom maps.

Her vivacious teacher, Mrs. Cover, had frequently
whirled past the students' desks, laughing, hips
swinging, dress swishing and suspended from the tension
of its crooked seams. Once, reaching out to
adjust Frances' undershirt, the teacher chimed gently,
"The earth spins round and round, making us nearly
sick! The earth knows how to trick us, too, so watch
out." Most townsfolk felt similarly, Frances realized,
and turned away from the larger goings-on of the
world. It-the world-was not for her, nor for anyone
in Munson, Frances knew; yet at once, the outer
world seemed glamorous and delicious, at least in
magazines.

Now Frances sat on a straight chair. In a matter of
hours it would be dark, and she expected company for
supper. In her cool, half-lit living-room, she waited,
ruminating.

When Frances was born, she had had a disorder.
Her face had hung strangely, and still did slightly to
this day. She had a low eye. Her mouth sagged to one
side. The disorder was named after a Belgian doctor,
and with it came problems. But fortunately, when
Frances was nineteen years old, a young man named
Martin French appeared. Martin was a stranger to the
town, and so everyone avoided him suspiciously,
though he had such a light, smooth air that folks soon
forgot themselves and wound up flocking to Martin
French after all. As a professional businessman, he
inspired respect throughout town, finally; and the newcomer's
eyes squinted in such a way when he smiled
that he created a sensation-especially with Frances'
mother, who told him about electrolysis for the first
time in his life.

Martin and Frances met outside the post-office toilet,
and there discovered a shy sense of camaraderie.
They saw a potential together, and began to keep company.
But Frances worried how Martin perceived her.
Finally, during a dinner date at the Cove restaurant,
she asked, "Martin, what about my face?"

"That's how you are. It doesn't affect me," Martin
said, chewing his dinner. Frances smiled to herself, sensing
the remark was portentous. Something would come
of her friendship with Martin French, she was sure.